Tourists in Sydney – First Outing

WE MADE IT! After a 33 hour experience at too many airports we made it to Sydney an hour earlier than expected, which was great but I reservation wasn’t until noon so we had 5 hours to kill at the airport. By the time we got on a cab we were hopped up on coffee and breakfast food!

First impression of Sydney: The neighborhood we are staying at is Turrella, which is about 20 mins away from Sydney CBD. It’s a super quiet small neighborhood that’s developed mostly around the train station (which is literately across the street from our room). The rest is a very European looking, with adorable brick houses and narrow streets.

After few days of gloomy weather and rain (go figure) we had a chance to go explore Sydney. It was a “nice” 8 km walk that included us also looking at used vans, so it started a little slow until I saw my first glimpse of downtown!

In the afternoon we took the day as it came, stopping at random shops and having lots of coffee, lattes have become my must have apparently. The architect in me wanted to go into all the cute old building, like The Strand Arcade.

Our first official tourist stop was the SEA LIFE Sydney Aquarium. I don’t know who was more excited Scott and I or all the little kids that were in there with us!! It did not disappoint, lots of little nemos and sharks and happy pancakes (sting rays!).

Right next door to SEA LIFE is WILD LIFE, and they had all the animals any tourist would love to see like wallabies, kangaroos, koalas, spiders and oh so many birds! We made friends with a parrot and shared some food with him!

From there we had some time to kill before Vivid started so we took a walk to Barangaroo Reserve, I was just happy to finally see water, but even more excited when I got my first glimpse at the Harbour Bridge!

Scott looking handsome as hellHarbour Bridge in the distanceLuna Park across the water, I have to admit I found it creepy looking at first…and it’s still creepy in this photo it seemsUnder the Harbour Bridge

Finally after over an hour of patiently waiting for something to happen, we looked over at the Sydney Opera House and TA-DA the light were on and the show started. We were very much impressed, it was a 10 min video that was everything Australia!

The rest of VIVID was lots of light and sound related artwork, most were interactive. Within an hour the Quay was packed with people and we were happy to walk and enjoy all the light displays. I have to say – first outing was a win!